Ivanhoe - Penn State University

CHAPTER XXVIII
This wandering race, sever’d from other men,
Boast yet their intercourse with human arts;
The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt,
Find them acquainted with their secret treasures:
And unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms,
Display undreamt-of powers when gather’d by them.
The Jew.
OUR HISTORY must needs retrograde for the space of a few
pages, to inform the reader of certain passages material to his
understanding the rest of this important narrative. His own
intelligence may indeed have easily anticipated that, when
Ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world,
it was the importunity of Rebecca which prevailed on her
father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the
lists to the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in the
suburbs of Ashby.
It would not have been difficult to have persuaded Isaac to
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this step in any other circumstances, for his disposition was
kind and grateful. But he had also the prejudices and scrupulous
timidity of his persecuted people, and those were to be
conquered.
“Holy Abraham!” he exclaimed, “he is a good youth, and
my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered
hacqueton, and his corslet of goodly price—but to carry
him to our house! —damsel, hast thou well considered?—he
is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger
and Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.”
“Speak not so, my dear father,” replied Rebecca; “we may
not indeed mix with them in banquet and in jollity; but in
wounds and in misery, the Gentile becometh the Jew’s
brother.”
“I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob Ben Tudela would
opine on it,” replied Isaac;—“nevertheless, the good youth
must not bleed to death. Let Seth and Reuben bear him to
Ashby.”
“Nay, let them place him in my litter,” said Rebecca; “I will
mount one of the palfreys.”
“That were to expose thee to the gaze of those dogs of